Super Size Me - McDonald's the Anti-Christ

[Jim of Seattle]

No, but most people who go on Atkins aren't getting the nutrition they need. Eating isn't just about calories, it's about vitamins and minerals and all that. Cutting out gigantic portions of one's diet cold turkey is asking for trouble. Breads have a lot of things in them your body needs besides having a lot of carbs and calories. Take out the bread, and you take out all those other good things. They tell you to take a lot of supplemental vitamins to make up for it, and a lot of people do, but too many don't.

Not to mention carbs are what give you energy all day. So everyone who goes on Atkins is tired all the time.

Not to mention also that it doesn't really promote a lifestyle change, so like any fad get-rich-quick diet, it's inviting a regain of all the weight, which happens just as often with Atkins as with any other diet.

Not to mention also also that there are other really bad things for you besides calories in all those things Atkins tells you you can eat, like bacon.

[Kapitano]

The science behind the Atkins diet is junk. The idea is that you can reprogram your digestive system to largely ignore carbohydrates, and to concentrate on breaking down protein and fat.

I was actually on the diet for 10 days. So I now know what it's like to have a headache for 10 days continiously. With lethargy, constipation, loss of concentration, and gaining the 7 lbs back immidiately afterwards.

Since then I've discovered a new diet. Its called 'Ride your bike quite a lot and eat sensibly'.

[Eric Y.]

I've discovered a new diet. Its called 'Ride your bike quite a lot and eat sensibly'.

.
yeah, nearly two years ago i developed a similar diet. i would walk for about two miles nearly every day, and drink huge quantities of water, and not much else except the occasional diet soda (totally eschewing the high-calorie-content drinks that are normally a mainstay of my diet), and ate smaller amounts of food than i'd been accustomed to, and severely reduced fatty things like mayonnaise and cheese. after a couple of months of this, i'd lost nearly fifty pounds, and felt a lot better about myself, and maintained a much healthier lifestyle for quite some time afterwards. then i got pretty lazy and fell back into my old bad habits, and have gone back up near my prior weight...

[the Jazz]

I'm one of those people who eats and eats and just doesn't gain weight. The chances of my being killed by a passing fat person who has seen me eat one too many giant texas barbeque burgers, and is enraged by the fact of my existence, are too significant to ignore.

Which is why I have locked myself in a room with a skinny door that no fat person can enter. I type on my computer all day and all night, barely moving. But somehow... still thin...

(dan dan DAAAAAAA)

[j$]

I'm one of those people who eats and eats and just doesn't gain weight.

I love it when people say this. The habits never change, the metabolism will. beware.

j$

[c hack]

I'm one of those people who eats and eats and just doesn't gain weight.

I love it when people say this. The habits never change, the metabolism will. beware.

Yup. Round about the time you hit 23, I reckon.

I used to work for a software company that built nutrition-monitoring/weight-loss software (http://www.balancelog.com) and as there were a team of highly trained nutritionists and fitness people on staff (one was a member of the Int'l Olympic Committee) I learned a ton about this stuff. You know what I woulda told you up front, had you laid the plaque idea on me: Where are your carbs, dude? You can't live without 'em. You're gonna get real tired and hungry.

Well, to its credit, it wasn't a diet as such -- more of a fast. It didn't try to pretend that it was nutritionally good for you, and if you started feeling queasy or woozy or whatever before the end of the month, you were supposed to get off it.

I'm still open to the idea of a fast being valuable in a religious sense, but I'm convinced that the only way to clease your body of bad food is to simply eat good food.

Although, the side effect of losing several pounds caused me to develop my own diet. It's called the "Quit Eating, You Fat Fuck" diet. It's pretty simple: you quit eating. Best way to lose weight. Of course, the problem is when you reach your desired weight and you start eating again, you'll get fat again in no time. So the only way to do it, really, is to stay on the diet until you die (the etymology of the two words verifies that this is the purest form of dieting). Sure, you won't live as long, but you'll look damn good while you're alive, and that's what's important.

[HeuristicsInc]

It's all about changing your habits in healthy ways - and, most importantly, in ways that you can live with in the long term. If you make such drastic changes that you're not happy with them, you're not going to stick with them. Find more healthy ways of behaving/eating that you like enough to keep doing them. They're out there.
-bill

[Jim of Seattle]

Although, the side effect of losing several pounds caused me to develop my own diet. It's called the "Quit Eating, You Fat Fuck" diet.

That generated an actual audible laugh while I'm sitting here at work. And I very rarely actually laugh out loud reading forum posts, even funny ones.

Anyway, yeah, losing weight is SO SIMPLE. Take in fewer calories than you spend. It's like a bank account. End of story. Carbs and protein and fat and all is about nutrition, not weight loss. Nutrition is an entirely different game which you must play simultaneously. Weight loss is about calories only.

That's why diets like Atkins, or fasting, or whatever, is a bad idea. Food has calories, which make you gain weight, but it also has things that you need that have nothing to do with weight, like vitamins and stuff. So sure, fasting or cutting out all carbs will make you lose weight, it'll also make you unhealthy pretty quick.

If anyone's interested, the actual formula is 3500 calories = 1 pound, so if you burn 500 more calories per day than you consume, you'll lose 1 pound per week. A very ballparky but helpful rule of thumb is approximately 100 calories burned per mile walked. Losing much more than 2 pounds per week is very dangerous for your health. (tviyh, you did NOT lose 50 pounds in a couple months. Had to have taken 5-6 months at least, or you'd be dead now)

What makes this more complicated is as you decrease your caloric intake, your body's metabolism slows down (in anticipation of a "famine", isn't that quaint?), so someone who starts on a strict healthy diet and loses a couple pounds, will plateau after a couple weeks, get discouraged and give up. The plateau happens no matter what you do, but plow through it (it can be a long month or so) and the weight loss will pick right up again when your body has figured out that you're not going to die after all.

The only way to offset the metabolic drop is increased exercise. Exercise a lot and your metabolism goes up, even while you're not exercising, so people who exercise have a much easier time losing weight because their body burns calories much faster, even when they're just watching TV. And no, exercising doesn't prevent the plateau, unfortunately.

J$ is right The Jazz. Don't rest too easy on eating fatty foods. Up until age 30 or so I was real skinny, like 125 pounds. I ate whatever I wanted and said what you're saying. That changed. Age will slow your metabolism down, and then you'll have bad eating habits you'll have to correct. You might be one of those people whose metabolism stays high even at 35 or older, but that's rare, and most skinny people over 40 are that way because they exercise and eat well.

[Leaf]

Have you seen "The Biggest Loser"? People on that show are losing 8-17 pounds A WEEK. hmmm... they must all be dead.

[Jim of Seattle]

OK, they aren't dead. Those people are watched over very carefully by doctors and are exercising their asses off. Most people don't have that kind of close medical attention and nothing else to do all day but lose weight. It's positively criminal for that show to get people to think that losing that kind of weight given a normal lifestyle and no team of experts hovering over you every second.

With the software I helped build, we were instructed to throw up warning messages anytime someone claimed they wanted to lose more than 2 pounds per week. More than 2.5 and the program wouldn't allow it for health reasons.

Losing 14 pounds a week means 2 pounds a day, which means, assuming they are consuming around 1000 calories a day (the minimum we need to stay healthy), they are burning 8000 calories a day.

Eight thousand.

[jb]

OK, they aren't dead. Those people are watched over very carefully by doctors and are exercising their asses off. Most people don't have that kind of close medical attention and nothing else to do all day but lose weight. It's positively criminal for that show to get people to think that losing that kind of weight given a normal lifestyle and no team of experts hovering over you every second.

With the software I helped build, we were instructed to throw up warning messages anytime someone claimed they wanted to lose more than 2 pounds per week. More than 2.5 and the program wouldn't allow it for health reasons.

Losing 14 pounds a week means 2 pounds a day, which means, assuming they are consuming around 1000 calories a day (the minimum we need to stay healthy), they are burning 8000 calories a day.

Eight thousand.

Well, the first week those Loser people lost a whole bunch of weight. Then the second week they all lost like NOTHING. And everybody, including their trainers, acted surprised. One guy actually gained three pounds. There was no mention of plateuing or starvation mode, or the difference between muscle weight and fat weight. It was horrifying. It was basically taking the dumbest assumptions you can make about how people lose weight, and putting them on the TV with no real information. I mean, come on! These people are working out like 5 hours a day, so naturally they're building muscle even as they lose fat. I wanted to scream at the TV. Instead I just turned it off.

One thing those isolation reality shows have in common is that there are always one or two (or more) people who apparently can't stand to spend a month or two away from their family. They get all weepy and sob about missing their family. It's sad, really. I love my family, but I could be away from them for three months without breaking down into a weepy mess. I might break down into a weepy mess because I hate my roommates, but that's a different issue.

[erik]

Well, the first week those Loser people lost a whole bunch of weight. Then the second week they all lost like NOTHING. And everybody, including their trainers, acted surprised. One guy actually gained three pounds. There was no mention of plateuing or starvation mode, or the difference between muscle weight and fat weight. It was horrifying. It was basically taking the dumbest assumptions you can make about how people lose weight, and putting them on the TV with no real information. I mean, come on! These people are working out like 5 hours a day, so naturally they're building muscle even as they lose fat. I wanted to scream at the TV. Instead I just turned it off.

One thing those isolation reality shows have in common is that there are always one or two (or more) people who apparently can't stand to spend a month or two away from their family. They get all weepy and sob about missing their family. It's sad, really. I love my family, but I could be away from them for three months without breaking down into a weepy mess. I might break down into a weepy mess because I hate my roommates, but that's a different issue.

The reeeeallly shitty thing is that the trainers DID mention it to the people, it just got edited down to like, a sentence. After the second week, I remember the lady trainer sitting down with her team and they were all bummed, and she said something along the lines of "You lost so much weight the first week, your body got defensive" or some crap. I mean, it looks like she was explaining it to them, but maybe it didn't make the final cut. Which is sucky.

The people on the Swan are even worse about how much they neeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeed their families. I think it stems from the dangerous mixture of low self esteem, and being forced to work on something for three months that in your normal life you try your best to ignore.

[jb]

Well, the first week those Loser people lost a whole bunch of weight. Then the second week they all lost like NOTHING. And everybody, including their trainers, acted surprised. One guy actually gained three pounds. There was no mention of plateuing or starvation mode, or the difference between muscle weight and fat weight. It was horrifying. It was basically taking the dumbest assumptions you can make about how people lose weight, and putting them on the TV with no real information. I mean, come on! These people are working out like 5 hours a day, so naturally they're building muscle even as they lose fat. I wanted to scream at the TV. Instead I just turned it off.

One thing those isolation reality shows have in common is that there are always one or two (or more) people who apparently can't stand to spend a month or two away from their family. They get all weepy and sob about missing their family. It's sad, really. I love my family, but I could be away from them for three months without breaking down into a weepy mess. I might break down into a weepy mess because I hate my roommates, but that's a different issue.

The reeeeallly shitty thing is that the trainers DID mention it to the people, it just got edited down to like, a sentence. After the second week, I remember the lady trainer sitting down with her team and they were all bummed, and she said something along the lines of "You lost so much weight the first week, your body got defensive" or some crap. I mean, it looks like she was explaining it to them, but maybe it didn't make the final cut. Which is sucky.

Irresponsible, that's what it was. And I bet the trainers were instructed not to mention that too much going in, so the producers would be sure to get the shock and trauma of the plateau week on tape.

[Jim of Seattle]

Yeah, I watch the Swan, it's my only reality-show vice, and I always try to remember that I'm seeing 10 minutes of footage out of three months of stuff. They have to make a "story" out of it, but the reality of what is really going down might end up being much different. I empathize with them a little, though, cuz not only are they isolated for that time, they're going through a bunch of hard stuff and there are cameras on them every minute. On the Swan, for example, they're working out 2 hours a day, eating Nutrisystem, apart from friends and family, and going through extensive surgery, major mouth reconstructions, etc., etc. They cut out all the parts where they say to their families "All these fucking cameras all day, and they're working me into the ground - it's not about me, it's all about their damn show. I can't stand these people."

What would they do if someone went through a program and had no problems with it at all - no weeping, no resistance to anything, just a trooper the whole time. They'd panic. I'm sure they goad the contestants a little to get stories out of them. They only need 10 minutes of stuff, not counting 2 minutes of establishing shots. I saw one episode where they made a whole big issue out of the fact that the dentist told her they were removing a tooth, and she didn't know about it before, and she turned her head to look at the dentist with a TINY amount of concern. It was blown up to a huge Event.

[fodroy]

I'm one of those people who eats and eats and just doesn't gain weight.

I love it when people say this. The habits never change, the metabolism will. beware.

j$

i'd have to second that. i've always had the metabolism of a humming bird, but since going to college i've found that i've started developing some flubber on the gut. don't eat just junk food. healthy food is good for you. hence the name.

[Leaf]

I've had this great love of fast food... I mean, it rocks. Unfortunately, SOMEONE has to go and ruin it all and co-relate my physical form and decreased immune system to McDonalds. DAMN IT. Ignorance can be bliss... now I feel guilt everytime I eat there... fuckers.






Of course, I still eat there once a week......

[Jim of Seattle]

Oh, I SO feel your pain. If I had six months to live, I think I'd eat junk food every day and get some fun, major-class drug addictions started to boot.

Seriously, though, you can eat McDonald's once a week. Just don't eat there every day.

[erik]

I'm one of those people who eats and eats and just doesn't gain weight.

If I had a dollar to bet right now, I'd say that you're less than 30 years old. Lots of people can stay thin while eating like a Texas death row inmate at his last supper, but very few can do it after 30. I don't know why 30 seems to be the magical age, it just does.

[c hack]

Yeah, I watch the Swan, it's my only reality-show vice,

I can't stand that show. They look as nasty coming out of it as they did going in. Sometimes worse.

[Leaf]

Yeah, I watch the Swan, it's my only reality-show vice,

I can't stand that show. They look as nasty coming out of it as they did going in. Sometimes worse.

I agree. My wife is always like "oh... she looks so good! She looks great!!"


but I find women tend to be uber-supportive of other women's make-overs...some how they all "look great" even when they clearly don't.

[Jim of Seattle]

Some of them really do look great, but you can usually tell before that they're going to look great at the end. It's totally a guilty pleasure, and I watch with a healthy dose of hip ironic detachment.

[JonPorobil]

Indulging whilst in "hip ironic detachment" mode is still indulging. A bunch of my high school friends did this with 80s music last year, and I wanted to tear out my eardrums.